


Where Hope is Coldest

by chamaenerion



Series: SPN Writing Challenges [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode: s10e22 The Prisoner, Gen, M/M, Post-Episode: s10e22 The Prisoner, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 04:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14846232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamaenerion/pseuds/chamaenerion
Summary: 10.22 coda; Dean left Castiel bruised and bloody on the floor. More importantly, Deanleft.





	Where Hope is Coldest

**Author's Note:**

> for the [DeanCas Writing Challenge](http://deancaswc.tumblr.com/) round 4: episodes
> 
> [round 3: [bodyswap/wingfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14424144/)]
> 
> [[tumblr](http://pluckydean.tumblr.com/)]
> 
> "Oft expectation fails, and most oft there  
> Where most it promises; and oft it hits  
> Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits."
> 
> ( _All's Well That Ends Well_ Act 2, scene 1, 145-147)

Castiel stared at the blade next to his face for a very long time. His phone rang, and still he stared.

He looked at the bright metal and the way it reflected the lights on the ceiling and the lamp over in the corner. He could see his own face, distorted and smeared with blood. And there were Dean’s fingerprints, smudged, but still recognizable to the one who had once carved them back into his remade body.

He imagined a future spent watching Dean from a distance as he resisted the Mark until the last of what made him Dean faded away. What would become of them at that point he dreaded to think. He could not kill Dean. No amount of desperation or brainwashing could ever force his hand.

Would he even live to see Dean succumb to the Mark?

_'Next time I won't miss.'_

Castiel blinked away moisture, and his eyes trailed down to where the blade had pierced the book. He imagined a hole through his eye socket, and his dying grace lighting up the room, shining off his blade, burning into Dean’s eyes...

His phone rang again, and he listened to it intently because listening was not thinking and he couldn’t bear to let his mind wander down the path it wanted to go.

The room fell into silence for a moment, and then the ringing began again.

He didn’t move from the floor, but continued his study of the blade as he reached blindly for his phone.

“I failed,” he said.

“Cas? Where are you?” Sam’s voice crackled over the line. “Where’s Dean?”

“I was too late. I couldn’t stop him.”

“What do you-”

“He killed them all, Sam.”

Silence.

“Where did he go?” Sam asked.

Castiel could feel the dried blood on his face where it rubbed against the phone and pulled at his lips when he spoke. “I don’t know.”

-

When he heard Sam at the bunker’s door, he finally picked himself up from the floor where Dean had left him. He didn’t remove the blade.

“Cas, hey,” Sam said as he turned the corner.

Castiel watched him stop in his tracks to survey the room with it’s broken furniture and piles of their things drenched in gasoline next to the bodies on the floor. His eyes widened when they fell on him.

"What happened?"

Castiel ran a hand over his face, clearing the blood and bruises.

"We have to find him. Soon, or I fear he may do something he can't come back from."

Sam glanced at the angel blade and then back to him. He cleared his throat. "Rowena won't hold up her end of the bargain. Crowley got away."

"None of that matters if we can't _find Dean_ ," Castiel said. He tried to walk past him, but Sam threw out an arm to block his way.

"And we will," he said, "but if we don't have a plan for what to do with him when we do find him, then what?"

"I can't watch Dean lose to the Mark."

"And we won't," Sam said, sounding like he was trying to convince himself, too. "We'll fix this."

Castiel wished for some of that faith when all he could feel was failure. He nodded, feeling numb, and left the room without sparing another glance at the blade that hadn't left a mark on him but that he could feel like a pierced heart.

_'Next time I won't miss.'_


End file.
